PHILOSOPHY OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE 2004–051RevelationFro.docx

PHILOSOPHY OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE 2004–05
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Revelation
From, Everything That Rises Must Converge
By Flannery O’Connor
The Doctor’s waiting room, which was very small, was almost
full when
the Turpins entered and Mrs. Turpin, who was very large, made
it look
even smaller by her presence. She stood looming at the head of
the
magazine table set in the center of it, a living demonstration
that the
room was inadequate and ridiculous. Her little bright black eyes
took
in all the patients as she sized up the seating situation. There
was one
vacant chair and a place on the sofa occupied by a blond child
in a
dirty blue romper who should have been told to move over and
make

room for the lady. He was five or six, but Mrs. Turpin saw at
once that
no one was going to tell him to move over. He was slumped
down in
the seat, his arms idle at his sides and his eyes idle in his head;
his nose
ran unchecked.
Mrs. Turpin put a firm hand on Claud's shoulder and said in a
voice
that included anyone who wanted to listen, "Claud, you sit in
that chair
there," and gave him a push down into the vacant one. Claud
was florid
and bald and sturdy, somewhat shorter than Mrs. Turpin, but he
sat
down as if he were accustomed to doing what she told him to.
Mrs. Turpin remained standing. The only man in the room
besides
Claud was a lean stringy old fellow with a rusty hand spread out
on
each knee, whose eyes were closed as if he were asleep or dead
or
pretending to be so as not to get up and offer her his seat. Her

gaze
2
settled agreeably on a well-dressed grey-haired lady whose eyes
met
hers and whose expression said: if that child belonged to me, he
would
have some manners and move over-there's plenty of room there
for
you and him too.
Claud looked up with a sigh and made as if to rise.
"Sit down," Mrs. Turpin said. "You know you're not supposed to
stand
on that leg. He has an ulcer on his leg," she explained.
Claud lifted his foot onto the magazine table and rolled his
trouser leg
up to reveal a purple swelling on a plump marble white calf.
"My!" the pleasant lady said. "How did you do that?"
"A cow kicked him," Mrs. Turpin said.
"Goodness!" said the lady.

Claud rolled his trouser leg down.
"Maybe the little boy would move over," the lady suggested, but
the
child did not stir.
"Somebody will be leaving in a minute," Mrs. Turpin said. She
could
not understand why a doctor-with as much money as they made
charging five dollars a day to just stick their head in the
hospital door
and look at you-couldn't afford a decent-sized waiting room.
This one
3
was hardly bigger than a garage. The table was cluttered with
limp-
looking magazines and at one end of it there was a big green
glass
ashtray full of cigarette butts and cotton wads with little blood
spots on
them. If she had had anything to do with the running of the
place, that

would have been emptied every so often. There were no chairs
against
the wall at the head of the room. It had a rectangular-shaped
panel in it
that permitted a view of the office where the nurse came and
went and
the secretary listened to the radio. A plastic fern, in a gold pot
sat in the
opening and trailed its fronds down almost to the floor. The
radio was
softly playing gospel music.
Just then the inner door opened and a nurse with the highest
stack of
yellow hair Mrs. Turpin had ever seen put her face in the crack
and
called for the next patient. The woman sitting beside Claud
grasped the
two arms of her chair and hoisted herself up; she pulled her
dress free
from her legs and lumbered through the door where the nurse
had
disappeared.
Mrs. Turpin eased into the vacant chair, which held her tight as

a
corset. "I wish I could reduce," she said, and rolled her eyes and
gave a
comic sigh.
"Oh, you aren't fat," the stylish lady said.
"Ooooo I am too," Mrs. Turpin said. "Claud he eats all he wants
to and
never weighs over one hundred and seventy-five pounds, but me
I just
look at something good to eat and I gain some weight," and her
4
stomach and shoulders shook with laughter. "You can eat all
you want
to, can't YOU, Claud?" she asked, turning to him.
Claud only grinned.
"Well, as long as you have such a good disposition," the stylish
lady
said, "I don't think it makes a bit of difference what size you
are. You

just can't beat a good disposition."
Next to her was a fat girl of eighteen or nineteen, scowling into
a thick
blue book which Mrs. Turpin saw was entitled Human
Development.
The girl raised her head and directed her scowl at Mrs. Turpin
as if she
did not like her looks. She appeared annoyed that anyone should
speak
while she tried to read. The poor girl's face was blue with acne
and Mrs.
Turpin thought how pitiful it was to have a face like that at that
age.
She gave the girl a friendly smile but the girl only scowled the
harder.
Mrs. Turpin herself was fat but she had always had good skin,
and,
though she was forty-seven years old, there was not a wrinkle in
her
face except around her eyes from laughing too much.
Next to the ugly girl was the child, still in exactly the same
position, and
next to him was a thin leathery old woman in a cotton print
dress. She

and Claud had three sacks of chicken feed in their pump house
that
was in the same print. She had seen from the first that the child
belonged with the old woman. She could tell by the way they
sat- kind
of vacant and white-trashy, as if they would sit there until
Doomsday if
nobody called and told them to get up. And at right angles but
next to
the well-dressed pleasant lady was a lank-faced woman who was
5
certainly the child's mother. She had on a yellow sweatshirt and
wine-
colored slacks, both gritty-looking, and the rims of her lips
were
stained with snuff. Her dirty yellow hair was tied behind with a
little
piece of red paper ribbon. Worse than niggers any day, Mrs.
Turpin
thought.

The gospel hymn playing was, "When I looked up and He
looked
down," and Mrs. Turpin, who knew it, supplied the last line
mentally,
"And wona these days I know I'll we-eara crown.
Without appearing to, Mrs. Turpin always noticed people's feet.
The
well-dressed lady had on red and grey suede shoes to match her
dress.
Mrs. Turpin had on her good black patent -leather pumps. The
ugly girl
had on Girl Scout shoes and heavy socks. The old woman had
on
tennis shoes and the white-trashy mother had on what appeared
to be
bedroom slippers, black straw with gold braid threaded through
them-
exactly what you would have expected her to have on.
Sometimes at night when she couldn't go to sleep, Mrs. Turpin
would
occupy herself with the question of who she would have chosen
to be if
she couldn't have been herself. If Jesus had said to her before he

made
her, "There's only two places available for you. You can either
be a
nigger or white trash," what would she have said? "Please,
Jesus,
please," she would have said, "Just let me wait until there's
another
place available," and he would have said, "No, you have to go
right
now", and I have only those two places so make up your mind."
She
would have wiggled and squirmed and begged and pleaded but it
would have been no use and finally she would have said, "All
right,
6
make me a nigger then-but that don't mean a trashy one." And
he
would have made her a near clean respectable Negro woman,
herself
but black.

Next to the child's mother was a redheaded youngish woman,
reading
one of the magazines and working a piece of chewing gum, hell
for
leather, as Claud would say. Mrs. Turpin could not see the
woman's
feet. She was not white trash, just common. Sometimes Mrs.
Turpin
occupied herself at night naming the classes of people. On the
bottom
of the heap were most colored people, not the kind she would
have
been if she had been one, but most of them; then next to them --
not
above, just away from -- were the white-trash; then above them
were
the home-owners, and above them the home-and-land owners, to
which she and Claud belonged, Above she and Claud were
people with
a lot of money and much bigger houses and much more land.
But here
the complexity of it would begin to bear in on her, for some of
the
people with a lot of money were common and ought to be below

she
and Claud and some of the people who had good blood had lost
their
money and had to rent and then there some colored people who
owned their homes and land as well. There was a colored dentist
in
town who had two red Lincoln’s and a swimming pool and a
farm with
registered whiteface cattle on it. Usually by the time she had
fallen
asleep all the classes of people were moiling and roiling around
in her
head, and she would dream they were all crammed in together in
a box
car, being ridden off to be put in a gas oven.
"That's a beautiful clock," she said and nodded to her right. It
was a big
wall clock, the face encased in a brass sunburst.
7
"Yes, it's very pretty," the stylish lady said agreeably. "And

right on the
dot too," she added, glancing at her watch.
The ugly girl beside her cast an eye upward at the clock,
smirked, then
looked directly at Mrs. Turpin and smirked again. Then she
returned
her eyes to her book. She was obviously the lady's daughter
because,
although they didn't look anything alike as to disposition, they
both
had the same shape of face and the same blue eyes. On the lady
they
sparkled pleasantly but in the girl's scared face they appeared
alternately to smolder and to blaze.
What if Jesus had said, "All right, you can be white-trash or a
nigger or
ugly"!
Mrs. Turpin felt an awful pity for the girl, though she thought it
was one
thing to be ugly and another to act ugly.
The woman with the snuff-stained lips turned around in her
chair and

looked up at the clock. Then she turned back and appeared to
look a
little to the side of Mrs. Turpin. There was a cast in one of her
eyes.
"You want to know where you can get you one of them there
clocks?"
she asked in a loud voice.
No , I already have a nice clock," Mrs. Turpin said. Once
somebody like
her got a leg in the conversation, she would be all over it.
8
"You can get you one with green stamps," the woman said.
"That's
most likely where he got hisn. Save you up enough, you can get
you
most anythang. I got me some joo’ry.”
Ought to have got you a wash rag and some soap, Mrs. Turpin
thought.
"I get contour sheets with mine," the pleasant lady said.
The daughter slammed her book shut. She looked straight in

front of
her, directly through Mrs. Turpin and on through the yellow
curtain
and the plate glass window which made the wall behind her. The
girl's
eyes seemed lit all of a sudden with a peculiar light, an
unnatural light
like night road signs give. Mrs. Turpin turned her head to see if
there
was anything going on outside that she should see, but she
could not
see anything. Figures passing cast only a pate shadow through
the
curtain. There was no reason the girl should single her out for
her ugly
looks.
"Miss Finley," the nurse said, cracking the door. The gum-
chewing
woman got up and passed in front of her and Claud and went
into the
office. She had on red high-heeled shoes.
Directly across the table, the ugly girl's eyes were fixed on Mrs.
Turpin

as if she had some very special reason for disliking her.
"This is wonderful weather, isn't it?" the girl's mother said.
9
“It's good weather for cotton if you can get the niggers to pick
it," Mrs.
Turpin said, "but niggers don't want to pick cotton any more.
You can't
get the white folks to pick it and now you can't get the niggers
because
they got to be right up there with the white folks."
"They gonna try anyways," the white-trash woman said, leaning
forward.
"Do you have one of those cotton-picking machines?" the
pleasant
lady asked.
"No," Mrs. Turpin said, "they leave half the cotton in the field.
We
don't have much cotton anyway. If you want to make it farming
now,

you have to have a little of everything. We got a couple of acres
of
cotton and a few hogs and chickens and just enough white-face
that
Claud can look after them himself
"One thang I don't want," the white-trash woman said, wiping
her
mouth with the back of her hand. "Hogs. Nasty stinking things,
a-
gruntin and a-rootin all over the place."
Mrs. Turpin gave her the merest edge of her attention. "Our
hogs are
not dirty and they don't stink," she said. "They're cleaner than
some
children I've seen. Their feet never touch the ground. We have a
pig-
parlor- that's where you raise them on concrete," she explained
to the
pleasant lady, "and Claud scoots them down with the hose every
afternoon and washes off the floor." Cleaner by far than that
child right

10
there, she thought. Poor nasty little thing. He had not moved
except to
put the thumb of his dirty hand into his mouth.
The woman turned her face away from Mrs. Turpin. "I know I
wouldn't
scoot down no hog with no hose," she said to the wall.
You wouldn't have no hog to scoot down, Mrs. Turpin said to
herself.
"A-gruntin and a-rootin and a-groanin," the woman muttered.
"We got a little of everything," Mrs. Turpin said to the pleasant
lady.
"It's no use in having more than you can handle yourself with
help like
it is. We found enough niggers to pick our cotton this year but
Claud he
has to go after them and take them home'again in the evening.
They
can't walk that half a mile. No they can't. I tell you," she said
and
laughed merrily, "I sure am tired of butter'ing up niggers, but
you got

to love em if you want em to work for you. When they come in
the
morning, I run out and I say, “How yal this morning?' and when
Claud
drives them off to the field I just wave to beat the band and they
just
wave back." And she waved her hand rapidly to illustrate.
"Like you read out of the same book," the lady said, showing
she
understood perfectly.
"Child, yes," Mrs. Turpin said. "And when they come in from
the field, I
run out with a bucket of ice water. That's the way it's going to
be from
now on," she said. "You may as well face it."
11
"One thang I know," the white-trash woman said. "Two thangs I
ain't
going to do: love no niggers or scoot down no hog with no
hose." And

she let out a bark of contempt.
The look that Mrs. Turpin and the pleasant lady exchanged
indicated
they both understood that you had to have certain things before
you
could know certain things. But every time Mrs. Turpin
exchanged a
look with the lady, she was aware that the ugly girl's peculiar
eyes were
still on her, and she had trouble bringing her attention back to
the
conversation.
"When you got something," she said, "you got to look after it."
And
when you ain't got a thing but breath and britches, she added to
herself, you can afford to come to town every morning and just
sit on
the Court House coping and spit.
A grotesque revolving shadow passed across the curtain behind
her
and was thrown palely on the opposite wall. Then a bicycle
clattered
down against the outside of the building. The door opened and a

colored boy glided in with a tray from the drug store. It had two
large
red and white paper cups on it with tops on them. He was a tall,
very
black boy in discolored white pants and a green nylon shirt. He
was
chewing gum slowly, as if to music. He set the tray down in the
office
opening next to the fern and stuck his head through to look for
the
secretary. She was not in there. He rested his arms on the ledge
and
waited, his narrow bottom stuck out, swaying slowly to the left
and
right. He raised a hand over his head and scratched the base of
his
skull.
12
"You see that button there, boy?" Mrs. Turpin said. "You can
punch

that and she'll come. She's probably in the back somewhere."
"Is thas right?" the boy said agreeably, as if he had never seen
the
button before. He leaned to the right and put his finger on it.
"She
sometime out," he said and twisted around to face his audience,
his
elbows behind him on the counter. The nurse appeared and he
twisted
back again. She handed him a dollar and he rooted in his pocket
and
made the change and counted it out to her. She gave him fifteen
cents
for a tip and he went out with the empty tray. The heavy door
swung to
slowly and closed at length with the sound of suction. For a
moment
no one spoke.
"They ought to send all them niggers back to Africa," the white
trash
woman said. “That's wher they come from in first place."
"Oh, I couldn't do without my good colored friends," the
pleasant lady

said.
"There's a heap of things worse than a nigger," Mrs. Turpin
agreed.
"It's all kinds of them just like it's all kinds of us."
"Yes, and it takes all kinds to make the world go round," the
lady said in
her musical voice.
As she said it, the raw-complexioned girl snapped her teeth
together.
Her lower lip turned downwards and inside out, revealing the
pale pink
13
inside of her mouth. After a second it rolled back up. It was the
ugliest
face Mrs. Turpin had ever seen anyone make and for a moment
she
was certain that the girl had made it at her. She was looking at
her as if
she had known and disliked her all her life-all of Mrs. Turpin's
life, it

seemed too, not just all the girl's life. Why, girl, I don't even
know you,
Mrs. Turpin said silently.
She forced her attention back to the discussion. "It wouldn't be
practical to send them back to Africa," she said. "They wouldn't
want
to go. They got it too good here."
"Wouldn't be what they wanted-if I had anythang to do with it,"
the
woman said.
"It wouldn't be a way in the world you could get all the niggers
back
over there," Mrs. Turpin said. "They'd be hiding out and lying
down
and turning sick on you and wailing and hollering and raring
and
pitching. It wouldn't be a way in the world to get them over
there."
"They got over here," the trashy woman said. "Get back like
they got
over."
"It wasn't so many of them then," Mrs. Turpin explained.

The woman looked at Mrs. Turpin as if here was an idiot indeed
but
Mrs. Turpin was not bothered by the look, considering where it
came
from.
14
"Nooo," she said, "they're going to stay here where they can go
to New
York and marry white folks and improve their color. That's what
they
all want to do, every one of them, improve their color."
"You know what comes of that, don't you?" Claud asked.
"No, Claud, what?" Mrs. Turpin said.
Claud's eyes twinkled. "White-faced niggers," he said with
never a
smile.
Everybody in the office laughed except the white-trash and the
ugly
girl. The girl gripped the book in her lap with white fingers.
The trashy

woman looked around her from face to face as if she thought
they were
all idiots. The old woman in the feed sack dress continued to
gaze
expressionless across the floor at the high-top shoes of the man
opposite her, the one who had been pretending to be asleep
when the
Turpins came in. He was laughing heartily, his hands still
spread out
on his knees. The child had fallen to the side and was lying now
almost
face down in the old woman's lap.
While they recovered from their laughter, the nasal chorus on
the radio
kept the room from silence.
“You go to blank blank
And I'll go to mine
But we'll all blank along
To-geth-ther,

15
And all along the blank
We'll help each-other out
Smile-ling in any kind of Weath-ther!"
Mrs. Turpin didn't catch every word but she caught enough to
agree
with the spirit of the song and it turned her thoughts sober. To
help
anybody out that needed it was her philosophy of life. She never
spared
herself when she found somebody in need, whether they were
white or
black, trash or decent. And of all she had to be thankful for, she
was
most thankful that this was so. If Jesus had said, "You call be
high
society and have all the money you want and be thin and svelte-
like,
but you can't be a good woman with it," she would have had to
say,
"Well don't make me that then. Make me a good woman and it
don’t

matter what else, how fat or how ugly or how poor!" Her heart
rose. He
had not made her a nigger or white-trash or ugly! He had made
her
herself and given her a little of everything. Jesus, thank you!
she said.
Thank you thank you! Whenever she counted her blessings she
felt as
buoyant as if she weighed one hundred and twenty five pounds
instead of one hundred and eighty.
"What's wrong with your little boy?" the pleasant lady asked the
white-
trashy woman.
"He has a ulcer," the woman said proudly. "He ain’t give me a
minute's
peace since he was born. Him and her are just alike," she said,
nodding
at the old woman, who was running her leathery fingers through
the
16

child's pale hair. "Look like I can't get nothing down them two
but Co'
Cola and candy."
That's all you try to get down em Mrs. Turpin said to herself.
Too lazy
to light the fire. There was nothing you could tell her about
people like
them that she didn't know already. And it was not just that they
didn't
have anything. Because if you gave them everything, in two
weeks it
would all be broken or filthy or they would have chopped it up
for
lightwood. She knew all this from her own experience. Help
them you
must, but help them you couldn't.
All at once the ugly girl turned her lips inside out again. Her
eyes were
fixed like two drills on Mrs. Turpin. This time there was no
mistaking
that there was something urgent behind them.
Girl, Mrs. Turpin exclaimed silently, I haven't done a thing to
you! The

girl might be confusing her with somebody else. There was no
need to
sit by and let herself be intimidated.
"You must be in college," she said boldly, looking directly at
the girl. "I
see you reading a book there."
The girl continued to state and pointedly did not answer.
Her mother blushed at this rudeness. "The lady asked you a
question,
Mary Grace," she said under her breath.
"I have ears," Mary Grace said.
17
The poor mother blushed again. "Mary Grace goes to Wellesley
College," she explained. She twisted one of the buttons on her
dress.
"In Massachusetts, she added with a grimace. "And in the
summer she
just keeps right on studying. Just reads all the time, a real book
worm.

She's done real well at Wellesley; she's taking English and Math
and
History and Psychology and Social Studies," she rattled on "and
I think
it’s too much. I think she ought to get out and have fun."
The girl looked as if she would like to hurl them all through the
plate
glass window.
"Way up north," Mrs. Turpin murmured and thought, well, it
hasn’t
done much for her manners.
"I'd almost rather to have him sick," the white-trash woman
said,
wrenching the attention back to herself. “He’s so mean when he
ain’t.
Look like some children just take natural to meanness. It's some
gets
bad when they get sick but, he was the opposite. Took sick and
turned
good. He don't give me no trouble now. It's me waitin to see the
doctor," she said.
If I was going to send anybody back to Africa, Mrs. Turpin
thought, it

would be your kind, woman. "Yes, indeed," she said aloud, but
looking
up at the ceiling, "It's a heap of things worse than a nigger."
And dirtier
than a hog, she added to herself
18
"I think people with bad dispositions are more to be pitied than
anyone on earth," the pleasant lady said in a voice that was
decidedly
thin.
"I thank the Lord he has blessed me with a good one," Mrs.
Turpin
said. "The day has never dawned that I couldn't find something
to
laugh at."
"Not since she married me anyways," Claud said with a comical
straight face.
Everybody laughed except the girl and the white trash.

Mrs. Turpin's stomach shook. "He's such a caution,” she said,
"that I
can't help but laugh at him."
The girl made a loud ugly noise through her teeth.
Her mother's mouth grew thin and tight. "I think the worst thing
in the
world," she said, "is an ungrateful person. To have everything
and not
appreciate it. I know a girl," she said, "who has parents who
would give
her anything, a little brother who loves her clearly, who is
getting a
good education, who wears the best clothes, but who can never
say a
kind word to anyone, who never smiles, who just criticizes and
complains all day long."
"Is she too old to paddle?" Claud asked.
19
The girl's face was almost purple.

"Yes," the lady said, "I'm afraid there's nothing to do but leave
her to
her folly. Some day she’ll wake up and it'll be too late."
"It never hurt anyone to smile," Mrs. Turpin said. "It just makes
you
feel better all own"
"Of course," the lady said sadly, "but there are just some people
you
can't tell anything to. They can't take criticism."
"If it's one thing I am," Mrs. Turpin said with feeling, "It's
grateful.
When I think who all I could have been besides myself and what
all I
got, a little of everything, and a good disposition besides, I just
feel like
shouting, 'Thank you, Jesus, for making everything the way it
is!' It
could have been different!" For one thing, somebody else could
have
got Claud. At the thought of this, she was flooded with gratitude
and a
terrible pang of joy ran through her. "Oh thank you, Jesus,
Jesus, thank

you!" she cried aloud.
The book struck her directly, over her left eye. It struck almost
at the
same instant that she realized the girl was about to hurl it.
Before she
could utter a sound, the raw face came crashing across the table
toward her, howling. The girl's fingers sank like clamps the soft
flesh of
her neck. She heard the mother cry out and Claud shout,
"Whoa!"
There was an instant when she was certain that she was about to
be in
an earthquake.
20
All at once her vision narrowed and she saw everything as if it
were
happening in a small room far away, or as if she were looking at
it
through the wrong end of a telescope.
Claud’s face crumpled and fell out of sight. The nurse ran in,

then out,
then again. Then the gangling figure of the doctor rushed out of
the
inner door. Magazines flew this way and that as the table turned
over.
The girl fell with a thud and Mrs. Turpin's vision suddenly
reversed
itself and she saw everything large instead of small. The eyes of
the
white-trashy woman were staring hugely at the floor. There the
girl,
held down on one side by the nurse and on the other by her
mother,
was wrenching and turning in their grasp. The doctor was
kneeling
astride her, trying to hold her arm down. He managed after a
second to
sink a long needle into it.
Mrs. Turpin felt entirely hollow except for her heart which
swung from
side to side as if it were agitated in a great empty drum of flesh.
"Somebody that's not busy call for the ambulance," the doctor
said in

the off-hand voice young doctors adopt for terrible occasions.
Mrs. Turpin could not have moved a finger. The old man who
had been
sitting next to her skipped nimbly into the office and made the
call, for
the secretary still seemed to be gone.
"Claud!" Mrs. Turpin called.
21
He was not in his chair. She knew she must jump up and find
him but
she felt like someone trying to catch a train in a dream, when
everything moves in slow, motion and the faster you try to run
the
slower you go.
"Here I am," a suffocated voice, very unlike Claud's said.
He was doubled up in the corner on the floor, pale as paper,
holding
his leg. She wanted to get up and go to him but she could not
move.

Instead, her gaze was drawn slowly downward to the churning
face on
the floor, which she could see over the doctor's shoulder.
The girl's eyes stopped rolling and focused on her. They seemed
a
much lighter blue than before, as if a door that had been tightly
closed
behind them was now open to admit light and air.
Mrs. Turpin's head cleared and her power of motion returned.
She
leaned forward until she was looking directly into the fierce
brilliant
eyes. There was no doubt in her mind that the girl did know her,
know
her in some intense and personal way, beyond time and place
and
condition. "What you got to say to me?" she asked hoarsely and
held
her breath, waiting, as for a revelation.
The girl raised her head. Her gaze locked with Mrs. Turpin's.
"Go back
to hell where you came from, you old wart hog," she whispered.
Her

voice was low but clear. Her eyes burned for a moment as if she
saw
with pleasure that her message had struck its target.
22
Mrs. Turpin sank back in her chair.
After a moment the girl's eyes closed and she turned her head
wearily
to the side.
The doctor rose and handed the nurse the empty syringe. He
leaned
over and put both hands for a moment on the mother's
shoulders,
which were shaking. She was sitting on the floor, her lips
pressed
together, holding Mary Grace's hand in her lap. The girl's
fingers were
gripped like a baby 's around her thumb. "Go on to the
hospital," he
said. "I’ll call and make the arrangements."
"Now let's see that neck," he said in a jovial voice to Mrs.

Turpin. He began to inspect her neck with his first two fingers.
Two
little moon-shaped lines like pink fish bones were
indented over her windpipe. There was the beginning of an
angry red swelling above her eye. His fingers passed over this
also.
'Lea' me be," she said thickly and shook him off. "See about
Claud. She
kicked him."
"I'll see about him in a minute," he said and felt her pulse. He
was a
thin grey-haired man, given to pleasantries. "Go home and have
yourself a vacation the rest of the day," he said and patted her
on the
shoulder.
Quit your pattin me, Mrs. Turpin growled to herself.
23
"And put an ice pack over that eye," he said. Then he went and

squatted down beside Claud and looked at his leg. After a
moment he
pulled him up and Claud limped after him into the office.
Until the ambulance came, the only sounds in the room were the
tremulous moans of the girl's mother, who continued to sit on
the
floor. The white-trash woman did not take her eyes off the girl.
Mrs.
Turpin looked straight ahead at nothing. Presently the
ambulance
drew up, a long dark shadow, behind the curtain. The attendants
came
in and set the stretcher down beside the girl and lifted her
expertly
onto it and carried her out. The nurse helped the mother gather
up her
things. The shadow of the ambulance moved silently -away and
the
nurse came back in the office.
"That there girl is going to be a lunatic, ain’t she?" the white-
trash
woman asked the nurse, but the nurse kept on to the back and
never

answered her.
"Yes, she's going to be a lunatic," the white-trash woman said to
the
rest of them.
"Po' critter," the old woman murmured. The child's face was
still in her
lap. His eyes looked idly out over her knees. He had not moved
during
the disturbance except to draw one leg up under him.
“I thank Gawd," the white-trash woman said fervently, "I ain't a
lunatic."
24
Claud came limping out and the Turpins went home.
As their pick-up truck turned into their own dirt road and made
the
crest of the hill, Mrs. Turpin gripped the window ledge and
looked out
suspiciously. The land sloped gracefully down through a field
dotted

with lavender weeds and at the start of the rise their small
yellow frame
house, with its little flower beds spread out around it like a
fancy
apron, sat primly in its accustomed place between two giant
hickory
trees. She would not have been startled to see a burnt wound
between
two blackened chimneys.
Neither of them felt like eating so they put on their house
clothes and
lowered the shade in the bedroom and lay down, Claud with his
leg on
a pillow and herself with a damp washcloth over her eye. The
instant
she was flat on her back, the image of a razor-backed hog with
warts on
its face and horns coming out behind its ears snorted into her
head.
She moaned, a low quiet moan.
"I am not," she said tearfully, "a wart hog. From hell." But the
denial
had no force. The girl's eyes and her words, even the tone of her

voice,
low but clear, directed only to her, brooked no repudiation. She
had
been singled out for the message, though there was trash in the
room
to whom it might justly have been applied. The full force of this
fact
struck her only now. There was a woman there who was
neglecting her
own child but she had been overlooked. The message had been
given
to Ruby Turpin, a respectable, hardworking, church-going
woman. The
tears dried. Her eyes began to burn instead with wrath.
25
She rose on her elbow and the washcloth fell into her hand.
Claud was
lying on his back, snoring. She wanted to tell him what the girl
had
said. At the same time, she did not wish to put the image of
herself as a

wart hog from hell into his mind.
"Hey, Claud," she muttered and pushed his shoulder.
Claud opened one pale baby blue eye.
She looked into it warily. He did not think about anything.
“Wha, whasit?" he said and closed the eye again.
"Nothing," she said. "Does your leg pain you?"
"Hurts like hell," Claud said
"It'll quit terreckly," she said and lay back down. In a moment
Claud
was snoring again. For the rest of the afternoon they lay there.
Claud
slept. She scowled at the ceiling. Occasionally she raised her
fist and
made a small stabbing motion over her chest as if she was
defending
her innocence to invisible guests who were like the comforters
of Job,
reasonable-seeming but wrong.
About five-thirty Claud stirred. "Got to go after those niggers,"
he
sighed, not moving.

26
She was looking straight up as if there were unintelligible hand
writing
on the ceiling. The protuberance over her eye had turned a
greenish-
blue. "Listen here," she said.
"What?"
"Kiss me."
Claud leaned over and kissed her loudly on the mouth. He
pinched her
side and their hands interlocked. Her expression of ferocious
concentration did not change. Claud got up, groaning and
growling,
and limped off. She continued to study the ceiling.
She did not get up until she heard the pick-up truck coming
back with
the Negroes. Then she rose and thrust her feet in her brown
oxfords,
which she did not bother to lace, and stumped out onto the back

porch
and got her red plastic bucket. She emptied a tray of ice cubes
into it
and filled it half full of water and went out into the back yard.
Every afternoon after Claud brought the hands in, one of the
boys
helped him put out hay and the rest waited in the back of the
truck
until he was ready to take them home. The truck was parked in
the
shade under one of the hickory trees.
"Hi yawl this evening," Mrs. Turpin asked grimly, appearing
with the
bucket and the dipper. There were three woman and a boy in the
truck.
27
"Us doin nicely," the oldest woman said. "Hi you doin?" and her
gaze
stuck immediately on the dark lump on Mrs. Turpin's forehead.
"You

done fell down, ain't you?" she asked in a solicitous voice. The
old
woman was dark and almost toothless. She had on an old felt
hat of
Claud's set back on her head. The other two women were
younger and
lighter and they both had new bright green sun hats. One of
them had
hers on her head; the other had taken hers off and the boy was
grinning
beneath it.
Mrs. Turpin set the bucket down on the floor of the truck.
"Yawl hep
yourselves," she said. She looked around to make sure Claud
had gone.
"No. I didn't fall down," she said, folding her arms. "It was
something
worse than that."
"Ain't nothing bad happen to YOU!" the old ,woman said. She
said it as
if they, all knew that Mrs. Turpin was protected in some special
way by
Divine Providence. "You just had you a little fall."

"We were 'in town at the doctor's office for where the cow
kicked Mr.
Turpin," Mrs. Turpin said in a flat tone that indicated they
could leave
off their foolishness. "And there was this girl there. A big fat
girl with
her face all broke out. I could look at that girl and tell she was
peculiar
but I couldn't tell how. And me and her mama were just talking
and
going along and all of a sudden WHAM! She throws this big
book she
was reading at me and ...”
"Naw!" the old woman cried out.
28
"And then she jumps over the table and commences to choke
me."
"Naw!" they all exclaimed, "naw!"
"Hi come she do that?" the old woman asked. "What ail her?"
Mrs. Turpin only glared in front of her.

"Somethin ail her," the old woman said.
"They carried her off in an ambulance," Mrs. Turpin continued,
"but
before she went she was rolling on the floor and they were
trying to
hold her down to give her a shot and she said something to me."
She
paused. " You know what she said to me?"
"What she say," they asked.
"She said," Mrs. Turpin began, and stopped, her face very dark
and
heavy. The sun was getting whiter and whiter, blanching the sky
overhead so that the leaves of the hickory tree were black in the
face of
it. She could not bring forth the words. "Something real ugly,"
she
muttered.
"She sho shouldn't said nothin ugly, to you," the old woman
said. "You
so sweet. You the sweetest lady I know."
"She pretty too," the one with the hat on said.

29
"And stout," the other one said. "I never knowed no sweeter
white
lady."
"That's the truth befo' Jesus," the old woman said. "Amen! You
des as
sweet and pretty as you can be."
Mrs. Turpin knew just exactly how much Negro flattery was
worth and
it added to her rage. "She said," she began again and finished
this time
with a fierce rush of breath, "that I was an old wart hog from
hell."
There was an astounded silence.
"Where she at?" the youngest woman cried in a piercing voice.
"Lemme see her. I'll kill her!"
"I'll kill her with you!" the other one cried.
"She b’long in the sylum" the old woman said emphatically.
"YOU the

sweetest white lady I know."
"She pretty too," the other two said. "Stout as she can be and
sweet.
Jesus satisfied with her!"
"Deed he is," the old woman declared.
Idiots! Mrs. Turpin growled to herself. YOU could never say
anything
intelligent to a nigger. YOU could talk at them but not with
them. "Yawl
30
ain't drunk your water," she said shortly. "Leave the bucket in
the
truck when you're finished with it. I got more to do than just
stand
around and pass the time of day," and she moved off and into
the
house.
She stood for a moment in the middle of the kitchen. The dark
protuberance over her eye looked like a miniature tornado cloud
which

might any moment sweep across the horizon of her brow. Her
lower lip
protruded dangerously. She squared her massive shoulders.
Then she
marched into the front of the house and out the side door and
started
down the road to the pig parlor. She had the look of a woman
going
single-handed, weaponless, into battle.
The sun was a deep yellow now like a harvest moon and was
riding
westward very fast over the far tree line as if it meant to catch
the hogs
before she did. The road was rutted and she kicked several
good-sized
stones out of her path as she strode along. The pig parlor was on
a little
knoll at the end of a lane that ran off from the side of the barn.
It was a
square of concrete as large as a small room, with a board fence
about
four feet high around it. The concrete floor sloped slightly so
that the

hog wash could drain off into a trench where it was carried to
the field
for fertilizer. Claud was standing on the outside, on the edge of
the
concrete, hanging onto the top board, hosing down the floor
inside.
The hose was connected to the faucet of a water trough nearby.
Mrs. Turpin climbed up beside him and glowered down at the
hogs
inside. There were seven long-snouted bristly shoats in it-tan
with
liver-colored spots-and an old sow a few weeks off from
farrowing. She
31
was lying on her side grunting. The shoats were running about
shaking
themselves like idiot children, their little slit pig eyes searching
the
floor for anything left. She had read that pigs were the most
intelligent
animal. She doubted it. They were supposed to be smarter than

dogs.
There had even been a pig astronaut. He had performed his
assignment perfectly but died of a heart attack afterwards
because they
left him in his electric suit, sitting upright throughout his
examination
when naturally, a hog should be on all fours.
A-gruntin and a-rootin and a-groanin.
"Gimme that hose," she said, yanking it away from Claud. "Go
on and
carry, them niggers home and then get off that leg.”
"You look like you might have swallowed a mad dog," Claud
observed,
but he got down and limped off. He paid no attention to her
humors.
Until he was out of earshot, Mrs. Turpin stood on the side of the
pen,
holding the hose and pointing the stream of water at the hind
quarters
of any shoat that looked as if it might try to lie down. When he
had had
time to get over the hill, she turned her head slightly and her
wrathful

eyes scanned the path. He was nowhere in sight. She turned
back again
and seemed to gather herself up. Her shoulders rose and she
drew in
her breath.
"What do you send me a message like that for?" she said in
a low fierce voice, barely above a whisper but with the force
of a shout in its concentrated fury. "How am I a hog and me
32
both? How am I saved and from hell too?" Her free fist was
knotted and with the other she gripped the hose, blindly
pointing the stream of water in and out of the eye of the old
sow whose outraged squeal she did not hear.
The pig parlor commanded a view of the back pasture
where their twenty beef cows were gathered around the hay-
bales Claud and the boy had put out. The freshly cut pasture
sloped down to the highway. Across it was their cotton field

and beyond that a dark green dusty wood which they owned
as well. The sun was behind the wood, very red, looking
over the paling of trees like a farmer inspecting his own
hogs.
"Why me?" she rumbled. "It's no trash around here, black or
white,
that I haven't given to. And break my back to the bone every
day
working. And do for the church.”
She appeared to be the right size woman to command the arena
before
her. "How am I a hog? she demanded. "Exactly how am I like
them?"
and she jabbed the stream of water at the shoats. "There was
plenty of
trash there. It didn't have to be me.
"If you like trash better, go get yourself some trash then," she
railed.
"You could have made me trash. Or a nigger. If trash is what
you
wanted, why didn't you make me trash?" She shook her fist with
the

hose in it' and a watery snake appeared momentarily in the air.
"I
could quit working and take it easy and be filthy," she growled.
33
"Lounge about the sidewalks all day drinking root beer. Dip
snuff and
spit in every puddle and have it all over my face. I could be
nasty.
“Or you could have made me a nigger. It's too late for me to be
a
nigger,” she said with deep sarcasm, “but I could act like one.
Lay
down in the middle of the road and stop traffic. Roll on the
ground.’
In the deepening light everything was taking on a mysterious
hue. The
pasture was growing a particular glassy green and the streak of
the
highway had turned lavender. She braced herself for a final
assault and

this time her voice rolled out over the pasture. “Go on,” she
yelled, “call
me a hog! Call me a hog again. From hell. Call me a wart hog
from hell.
Put that bottom rail on top. There’ll still be a top and bottom!”
A garbled echo returned to her.
A final surge of fury shook her and she roared, "Who do you
think you
are?"
The color of everything, field and crimson sky, burned for a
moment
with a transparent intensity. The question carried over the
pasture and
across the highway and the cotton field and returned to her
clearly, like
an answer from beyond the wood.
She opened her mouth but no sound came out of it.
A tiny truck, Claud's, appeared on the highway, heading rapidly
out of
sight. Its gears scraped thinly. It looked like a child's toy. At
any

34
moment a bigger truck might smash into it and scatter Claud's
and the
niggers' brains all over the road.
Mrs. Turpin stood there, her gaze fixed on the highway, all
her muscles rigid, until in five or six minutes the truck
reappeared,
returning. She waited until it had had time to turn
into their own road. Then like a monumental statue coming
to life, she bent her head slowly and gazed, as if through the
very heart of mystery, down into the pig parlor at the hogs.
They had settled all in one corner around the old sow who
was grunting softly. A red glow suffused them. They appeared
to pant
with a secret life.
Until the sun slipped finally behind the tree line, Mrs. Turpin
remained there with her gaze bent to them as if she were
absorbing
some abysmal life-giving knowledge. At last she lifted her head.
There

was only a purple streak in the sky, cutting through a field of
crimson
and leading, like an extension of the highway, into the
descending
dusk. She raised her hands from the side of the pen in a gesture
hieratic
and profound. A visionary light settled in her eyes. She saw the
streak
as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth
through a
field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls
were tumbling toward heaven. There were whole companies of
white
trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of black
niggers in
white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and
clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the
procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once
as those
who , like herself and Claud, had always had a little of
everything and

35
the given wit to use it right. She leaned forward to observe them
closer.
They were marching behind the others with great dignity,
accountable
as they had always been for good order and common sense and
respectable behavior. They, alone were on key. Yet she could
see by
their shocked and altered faces even their virtues were being
burned
away. She lowered hands and gripped the rail of the hog pen,
her eyes
small but fixed unblinkingly on what lay ahead. In a moment the
vision
faded but she remained where she was.
At length she got down and turned off the faucet and in her slow
way
on the darkening path to the house. In woods around her the
invisible
cricket choruses had struck up, but what she heard were the
voices of
the souls climbing upward into the starry field and shouting

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